“Murmur!”
All of a sudden, he was thrust back into his sweat-soaked body, tangled in the bedsheets. The sensation of foreign touch on his skin—not the fabric of the bedsheets—reached his brain only a fraction of a second before he acted.
Before he was even fully conscious, he grabbed the intruder and flipped them under his body. He summoned his souls and used them as bindings, pulling the intruder’s arms and legs apart and pinning them down.
With one hand, he supported his weight. With the other, hegripped the intruder’s hair and yanked their neck sharply to the side. His tail barb poised at the pulsing artery, venom welling at the tip, ready to strike at the slightest provocation.
The intruder went still.
And Murmur finally realized who was in his bed.
He blinked, certain his eyes were deceiving him. But no, as his vision sharpened with his awareness, he saw the dark eyes of his little witch. Her pulse beat so furiously, he could see it in her neck.
But she didn’t move. She couldn’t. He had restrained her completely.
A deep, primal satisfaction filled him, overriding the residual terror from the dream.
The sight of fettered limbs had always given him a depraved satisfaction. He wasn’t ashamed to admit it. He enjoyed stringing his prisoners up, watching them try to pull their limbs free. He liked seeing the bindings that held them immobile.
But something about the sight of this little witch trapped was even more satisfying, to the point where he felt heat stirring low in his abdomen. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t angry. No, he was furious.
“Do you have no sense of self-preservation?” he snapped. “Do my commands mean nothing to you? I very clearly told you never to come into this room.”
The fear hadn’t left her eyes, but she replied hoarsely, “I thought you were dying, asshole.”
“Youcould have died.” He illustrated his point by waving his tail above her head in case she missed just how close it had been to her neck. “I thought your whole agenda here was to avoid that outcome.”
She glared at him but said nothing. She wasn’t nearly terrified enough for his liking.
His eyes were drawn down to her heaving chest, and he allowed them to wander over her neck, her jaw, and the pile ofrich black hair still clenched in his fist. He’d never studied her this closely before.
“Besides, you should want me to die,” he said. “If I’m dead, you can go home, remember?”
Her glare intensified. If she hadn’t wanted him dead before, she looked as though she did now.
Then, she frowned. “What was that? A nightmare?”
“A vision,” he found himself replying. Why, he didn’t know.
He was too distracted, studying each individual eyelash around her eye. When he’d first taken her, her eyes had been covered in dark makeup. Now, they were bare. Her eyelashes were short but thick. She had slender eyes, but her dark pupils gave them an intensity that made them appear larger.
“Of what?”
“My death,” he replied distractedly, still caught up in his detailed perusal of her features. He wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but he wasn’t in a great hurry to stop it.
“Your what?”
“I dream of my death every time I close my eyes.” Why was he admitting this? He’d never told another living soul.
“Is it an actual premonition or just symbolism?”
“I’m a seer. I’ve had visions of the future for as long as I can remember.”
“Can you change the outcome of—?” Her eyes widened. “That’s what the spell is about.”
“In part.”
Whyin the devil’s name was he telling her this? But he was too caught up in this strange moment to care. He was chasing something he didn’t understand, and perhaps didn’t want to understand, but he didn’t want to let it go yet.
